


(i guess we'll just have to adjust.)

by Aja



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-08
Updated: 2010-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'd like to say this fic wasn't written purely out of the desire to use unsubtle Arcade Fire lyrics, but it would be an atrocious lie.</p><p> this one's for me, because nine months is a long time to go without writing barely anything at all. And maybe a little bit for Mal, too.</p>
    </blockquote>





	(i guess we'll just have to adjust.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say this fic wasn't written purely out of the desire to use unsubtle Arcade Fire lyrics, but it would be an atrocious lie.
> 
> this one's for me, because nine months is a long time to go without writing barely anything at all. And maybe a little bit for Mal, too.

Five.  
  
  
Ariadne feels sated and warm when she opens her eyes. She rolls over and automatically powers on the laptop--second year doctoral students don't really need to waste money on desks when they fall asleep using their macbooks every night.  
  
She IMs Arthur, who's always online, without really thinking about it.  
  
"Hey," she says. "You were in my dream last night."  
  
"What time is it there," he responds, no punctuation or capitals or anything. She smiles, looks at the clock. "Time for office hours," she says. "Not that anyone will come."  
  
"You always did," he types back.  
  
She grins and sits up, wide awake.   
  
"Tell me more about how I starred in your wildest dreams," he says. Then he adds the winky emoticon, like she couldn't have told he was just joking otherwise. She never knows what to do with him. Never has.  
  
"I was in Paris," she says. "You were some kind of dream ninja."  
  
"Wow," he says. "Architect by day, crime-fighting martial artist by night."  
  
"No, you were a thief," she types, grinning as the pieces come back. "And you totally had a Southern gentleman thing going, it was crazy."  
  
"I fake a very good Southern accent. It's all in how you use your tongue."  
  
"I know," she types. Then she stops for a moment before finally adding, "You showed me a trick or two."  
  
He doesn't say anything. She tries not to think about the way his kiss had felt in the dream, but she does anyway. She remembers: the van falling. That guy she sat next to on the plane from Sydney showing up as the crazy extractor. Something about skiing.  
  
Arthur squeezing her hand as they left the airport.  
  
His IM window flashes at last. "Have you eaten yet?"  
  
"Just woke up."  
  
Arthur says, "There's a superstition that if you tell your dream before breakfast it comes true."  
  
She types, "lol, i hope not," but a shudder sneaks up her spine.  
  
"Too late," he types. "You'll just have to put up with dream ninjas calling you ma'am and sweeping you off on adventures."  
  
She types, "I could get used to that."  
  
Then she stops before she hits 'send' and looks at what she's just written.  
  
She pauses over the keys, waiting for the kick.  
  
  
  
  
Four.  
  
  
"But you've only been gone six months," says Miles, smiling benignly as he pours Dom a glass of water. Dom looks out at the back yard, where his children are playing as blithely as if he never left.  
  
"Really," he says, taking a long drink. "It felt like longer."  
  
"For us all," says Miles.  
  
When the knock at the door comes, he can't tell how he knows it's Saito. He downs the rest of his water in one gulp and motions for Miles to stay seated. "It's okay," he says. "No problem, I'll get it."  
  
Saito's eyes are still old, the way he remembers them. One look and it's like they're still seated across from each other on the plane.  
  
Saito doesn't say anything when he crosses the threshhold. It takes Dom a moment to realize he hasn't actually invited him in. Then another moment to realize that, no, he has. Just not out loud.  
  
"You're sweating," Saito says finally. Dom's hand comes up automatically, to feel how red his face has gotten just from standing there. Miles pokes his head around the door.  
  
"So nice to meet you," Saito says, extending his hand. "I've heard much of you from Mr. Cobb."  
  
"Not at all," Miles says. "We owe you a great debt for bringing him back to us."  
  
"The debt is all mine," Saito says softly, gaze flickering over to Dom.  
  
Dom feels suddenly tight under the collar. He says, "Would you like to go some place where we can talk?" and then they're alone. Alone and standing very close.  
  
Saito says, "I need you to give back what was taken from me. All those years spent, waiting. Growing old waiting for you."  
  
"I looked for you," Dom whispers. "I never stopped. I tried--"  
  
"Shh," Saito says, and shushes him with a smooth palm covering his mouth. "I knew you would come. I knew it would be you who came." His fingertips brush the corner of Dom's lips. His skin buzzes everywhere. "Give me back the memory of being young," Saito says. "You know the secret. You know the way out."  
  
Dom starts to answer that he doesn't know anything, that he's still a seventy-year-old man trapped in a roughshod shell of a body. But his lips move against Saito's skin, and Saito hushes him again. "You know the way," Saito says again. "The wait and the decades you spent on the other side," he says. "I know you found the way back to this world. I need you to show me how."  
  
He radiates heat and Dom steps forward into it without thinking. "I don't--" he says beneath Saito's hand. "I don't know the way. I don't remember--"  
  
"I remember you," says Saito, and Dom feels a sharp ache him when they kiss, hands moving to cup Saito's jaw in his palms, hungry and fierce.  
  
Saito kisses him hard but slow, like he wants and wants just as much as Dom but knows he's got all the time in the world now. It's almost enough to make Dom laugh, and he can feel guilt hovering around the edges:  _why aren't you downstairs, outside playing with your children_ , and _what would Mal say if she could see you like this--so unfaithful_ ?   
  
Then Saito murmurs, "I can save you next if you like. We can take turns," and shifts to pull Dom straight up against him, into his expanse of solid muscle, into his arousal and the rigid arch of his erection against Dom's thigh. And Dom can't remember what he was thinking about a moment before. Nothing exists but their bodies colliding and moving against each other, so warm, so good even through their clothes.   
  
Dom feels heady, strong in a way he hasn't since he walked out of the airport. "I'm okay with that," he says, fitting himself against Saito and leaning up to scrape his mouth along the stubble at Saito's chin. "Just don't let me go to sleep any time soon," he add, voice hitching a little.  
  
Saito pulls back just a little, just enough so Dom can feel the strength of his gaze again. He starts, "But how else do you think we could--"  
  
Dom kisses him again, doesn't let him finish that sentence. Never let him finish, he thinks, and closes his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
  
Three.  
  
  
The first time she shows up, Ariadne's not really surprised. She waits for the fear to come when she recognizes the curve of her body in that black dress, the clever, cruel little smile that hides so much. She's sitting on a bench, a stack of books on her right side, wearing one of those little black hats like Audrey Hepburn in  _Funny Face_ . She smiles when she sees Ariadne.  
  
Ariadne slows her bike, stops. Knows she's going to be late for office hours but can't resist. The wind is blowing, whipping her hair beneath her hat. It's a warm summer day, and she's wearing white shorts and one of those button-up halter tops with a loose silk scarf. It makes her feel like a 50's pinup model. All around her people are wearing hats and sunday dresses, like something out of  _Hello Dolly_ . Some of them are on their way to class, their textbooks and backpacks slung over lace and taffeta and muslin.  
  
In the center, she sits on an olive-grey park bench, the only thing not all dressed in blinding white that Ariadne can see for miles.  
  
"I remember you," Mal says. Then she smiles and pats the bench beside her. Ariadne comes over but doesn't sit down. Mal's smile gets bigger at that, as if Ariadne has just surprised her--or maybe done exactly what Mal thought she would.  
  
"What are you doing here?" she says. She looks around for ways out. She's not supposed to manipulate her own memories, but her subconscious has created a replica of the campus at Oxford and she needs to know she can find a way out. She wonders if her subconscious projections will come after Mal--surely it should happen any moment, she's obviously in a dream....  
  
"I could ask you the same thing," Mal says. She doesn't sound upset or threatening. Her head is wrapped in a black scarf, and in her hand she's holding a chipped champagne glass. It's empty, but she twirls it between her fingers instead of setting it down. "Don't you have better things to do than follow me around?"  
  
"I'm not," Ariadne starts. "I didn't--" and then she stops, because she's not so sure.  
  
Mal laughs. "You think I don't know what I am?" She runs her hand over Ariadne's arm, slowly, from wrist to elbow. She pauses with her fingernails just grazing Ariadne's skin. They're painted a dark, dark pink. "You think I don't know you wanted me to be here?"  
  
Ariadne pulls away. "I have to go to class," she says.  
  
Mal smiles up at her, bright curls framing her face.  
  
She says: "Do you, darling?"  
  
  
  
  
  
Two.  
  
  
Mal takes sedatives every night--the strongest she can legally buy, the kind that send her into deep, soundless sleep where not even the light breaks through, much less color changes or free falls or lost husbands.  
  
Philippa is getting old enough to understand. She asks questions about their life from before, about the way Dad began to lose pieces of himself, as if she's gradually starting to put two and two together, starting to make sense of how things slipped away, of the time when both her parents were away for weeks, dragging themselves back after the long unexplained absences, jet-lagged for days and days. How one of them just never came back.  
  
She makes them tell her their dreams, religiously, every day before breakfast. She forces details out of them, makes them start keeping journals so they can remember everything, every last detail.   
  
So far, nothing's been too odd or seemed too out of place.  
  
Yet.  
  
Jamie's totem is a felt bookmark. Philippa's is a hideous rubber toad she won at a carnival.  
  
Mal trains them, over and over.  
  
Never leave your totem behind. Always have it within reach of your hand.   
  
If you ever realize you've lost your totem, stop what you're doing, and fall.   
  
If you ever realize you don't know how you got where you are, stop what you're doing, and fall.  
  
If you ever feel like things aren't what they seem, stop what you're doing, and fall. The fall is the quickest way to wake yourself up.   
  
The time will come when she'll have to make them practice. She'll have to make them get used to the plunge. To the gravity shifts and the hurtles off cliffs and out windows. She'll have to get them used to giving each other the kick.  
  
She tells herself that she can wait for just a little longer.  
  
She tells herself she has plenty of time.  
  
  
  
  
  
One.  
  
  
Yusuf is exhausted to the bone when he and Eames finally board the long flight back to Mombasa. He feels as if he's spent the last two months of his life in varying states of jet lag, and thanks God and Saito they're at least flying first class. Next to him Eames just smirks at the flight attendants and nurses his champagne. Yusuf adjusts his cabin air nozzle and leans his chair back.  
  
And falls.  
  
"Hey, shh, hey," Eames says when he jerks upright. His hand cups Yusuf's elbow. Yusuf barely stops himself from yanking his arm away. "It's okay," he says. "You're on the plane. You're here with me. We're going to Mombasa. It's not a dream."  
  
Yusuf clenches and unclenches his fists. He breathes in, then out. Part of him is still bracing for the impact of all that water swallowing him whole.  
  
"Christ," says Eames, leaning forward. "You never even had a totem, did you?" He sounds so appalled, so suddenly alarmed, and the incongruity startles Yusuf into a laugh.  
  
"No, of course not," he says. "Why would I?"  
  
The lines of Eames' concern divide his face down the middle in one long furrow ending in a frown.  
  
"Because," he says. "The totem helps you tell when you're dreaming. Sometimes it's the only way you can tell."  
  
Yusuf looks at him.   
  
Eames is the kind of person who never alights in one place long. He's the kind of person who's the same in Mombasa as he is in Paris or Los Angeles or Manchester.  
  
Yusuf wonders what that life must be life. He wonders if Eames, as a Forger, eventually stopped changing himself when he was awake, the same way that dream-sharers eventually stop dreaming when they're asleep. He wonders if Eames' only tie to reality is to himself--and even then, only when awake.   
  
The difference between them is that Eames is only going back to Mombasa. Yusuf--Yusuf is going  _home_ . Home is his shop above stairs and his apartment below, and the cat who sleeps under the awning. Home is Muthoni, who works in the duka on the corner of Mackawi Road and whispers his name sweetly on the rare occasions she lets him inside after hours. Home is the yearly trip back to Somajiguda, his brother's family engulfing him in hugs and his mother tugging his hair and scolding him to call more often. Home is Kilindini Harbour shining brighter in the sun than any dream ever could.  
  
"No, no," he says. "I would never take an object with me into the dream world." Eames raises his eyebrows. He looks and looks but doesn't make a sound.   
  
Yusuf offers him the smile he uses to reassure his clients that they've woken up.   
  
"Our real totems," he says, "aren't what we take with us into the dream. They're what we leave behind."  
  
He leans back in his chair again. He closes his eyes.  
  
And floats.


End file.
